02/12/2014

Former San Diego councilman Carl DeMaio, now a Republican candidate for Congress, is making headlines for a brief segment of a new campaign ad which features his partner, Johnathan Hale, as the couple marches in a Gay Pride parade, the Wall Street Journal reports:

Several GOP campaign officials and Elizabeth Wilner, who tracks campaign ads for the nonpartisan firm Kantar Media, said it was the first time they knew of a candidate of either party airing an ad featuring a gay partner. The implications are deep for a Republican Party whose platform defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman at a time when same-sex marriage is becoming more broadly accepted.

"This is who I am," Mr. DeMaio said in an interview. "It's something that's important to me. I want to embrace equality, and feel like the party should, too."

NOM is a foe of DeMaio and plans to run ads against him before the June 3 primary.

He is one of the party's top challengers this year as it tries to unseat Democratic Rep. Scott Peters. Although other Republicans are running for the seat, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) has given Mr. DeMaio $10,000, and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) contributed $5,000. Conservative Georgia Rep. Tom Price kicked in $1,000.

Dale Hansen, the weeknight sports anchor on Dallas-Fort Worth's WFAA, had something to say to the anonymous NFL execs that were quoted in Sports Ilustrated's shamefully-executed follow-up to the Michael Sam news.

Said Hansen in a special 'unplugged' commentary:

You beat a woman and drag her down a flight of stairs, pulling her hair out by the roots? You're the fourth guy taken in the NFL draft.

Bruce Weber says trans shoot for Barneys affected him deeply: "I would say it’s a sitting that really changed the course of my life, in a way.Because, I don’t know, the older I get, I want to do photographs and make films about things that are going to make people think about things."

amfAR to invest $100 million in HIV research over next six years. “Today, we are at a historic juncture in the fight against AIDS,” added amfAR Chairman of the Board Kenneth Cole. “With an improving economy, recent technological advances and momentum in the research community, now is the time to commit ourselves to finding an accessible cure and finally bring the global HIV/AIDS epidemic to an end.”

Preservationists want NYC's Stonewall Inn and Julius bar declared individual landmarks: "Julius' touts itself as the oldest gay bar in New York City. The Stonewall was the site of not only the 1969 riots that are widely considered the most important event to kickstart the modern LGBT rights movement, but also, 44 years later, celebrations when the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act."

Chicago man gets four years in prison for beating and stabbing of prosecutor who had come to the defense of a gay couple harassed on the lakeshore. "The prosecutor was cut near his left eye, on his side and under his right arm, which needed 40 stitches, officials said at the time."

Washington Post: Nigeria's anti-gay law demands response from the West: "Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and a major oil producer, is harder to influence. But Britain still delivers hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid, while the United States buys 70 percent of Nigeria’s oil. Both should be aggressively using their leverage to protect the vulnerable gay community. As a starting point, they should let Mr. Jonathan know he and his government will be unwelcome in Washington and London until the law is repealed."

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia heard arguments this morning in San Antonio in a lawsuit challenging Texas' ban on same-sex marriage but did not immediately rule, Lone Star Q reports:

“Counselors have made some excellent arguments on both sides,” Garcia said inside a packed courtroom at the federal courthouse in San Antonio at the conclusion of the hearing.

Outside the courthouse moments later, the two same-sex couples who are plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit challenging the marriage bans — Cleopatra DeLeon and Nicole Dimetman, and Mark Phariss and Victor Holmes — addressed the media.

“I think it’s interesting that the state points out that the voters approved a constitutional ban in 2005,” Phariss said. “The voters also throughout the entire nation approved approved a constitutional amendment, the 14th, in 1868, that provides for equal protection under the law. And that provision in the U.S. Constitution trumps anything that Texas does.”